ABSTRACT
Crutchley shows that English education in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries was profoundly influenced by empire. The British Empire was not something that just affected the colonies: it had a profound impact on the development of metropolitan ideas and practices, and this included education. Education in England became ‘for, about, and because of empire’. Education was developed and transformed as a tool for advancing a particular agenda. The political and commercial interests of an elite minority were defended, and given broad social legitimacy, by defining empire in terms of a national project and shared identity. In all phases and sectors, albeit in different ways, promotion of empire became a core purpose of education. Implicitly, that poses uncomfortable questions for us today. We are likely to see education for, about and because of empire as indoctrination, a perversion of the legitimate purposes of education. But there is an undeniable parallel between the use of education to promote empire in the past, and contemporary use of education to promote projects such as ‘decolonisation’ itself, or environmentalism.
